


It's the Sun in Your Eyes

by moreless



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Study, Dubious Morality, Everyone Has Issues, Everyone Needs A Hug, F/F, Gen, Mentions of Slavery, Post-Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Redemption...for some people, Somebody Lives/Not Everyone Dies, That's Not How The Force Works, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-20
Updated: 2020-11-20
Packaged: 2021-03-09 04:29:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 14,750
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27197863
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moreless/pseuds/moreless
Summary: Hux hadn't expected to survive the fall of the First Order. Yet here he is on Cixin station, alive and in hiding with an uneasy ally in an old comrade, Phasma. Their goals; stay safe, stay alive, get back what's theirs.Meanwhile Rey and Zorii Bliss are on the trail of M, a secretive information broker who might just have what they need to help Finn and other former stormtroopers find their families. Their path leads them to Cixin station, where threads in the Force are converging for an unknown purpose.
Relationships: Armitage Hux & Phasma, Zorii Bliss/Rey
Comments: 6
Kudos: 8
Collections: Fic In A Box





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [inquisitor_tohru](https://archiveofourown.org/users/inquisitor_tohru/gifts).



> Dear recip, you had some really wonderful prompts, and it's been a great pleasure to write for you. Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to waffle on about some of my favourite SW things; worldbuilding, oversimplified complex moral pseudophilosophies, the Force...I hope you enjoy this.
> 
> Title from _Weight Of Living, Pt.II_.

Hux isn’t quite sure when exactly the plan starts to go wrong. Certainly it’s been moving along pretty well, until the door had slid open and the hapless idiot Phasma’s currently choking out had wandered in. The bastard’s Trandoshan, so it’s taking her a considerably longer time than usual.

“Just pfassking shoot him,” Hux hisses. He’d do the job himself, but right now he’s got both hands busy slicing into the console. Their plan relies heavily on speed, a quick in-and-out right between the shift change. The first shift has gone, the second is delayed, and the workers here aren’t paid enough to loiter. One slightly more dedicated member of the dock’s security is currently sleeping off a dose of bantha tranquilisers in the nearest maintenance hatch. She’s a Wookie, it probably won’t kill her.

Of course then this idiot wandered in. Forgotten his lunch, or something to that effect. They hadn’t planned for this kind of unpredictability. At least he has an excuse, Hux thinks irritably, as his hands fly over the console, studiously ignoring the grunting noises behind him. Though he does take a moment to loosen his blaster in its holster. He’s spent his whole life with fairly predictable discipline drilled into himself and everyone else. In the Order, people aren’t supposed to be unpredictable. That’s the whole point of order, patterns of movement that could be regulated, controlled. Not that he’s not aware that that’s not how most of the galaxy thinks, but he’s still getting used to _everyone_ thinking this way, not just one idiotic Force user.

Phasma had grown up half savage. She’s been out in the wilds of space longer than he has. Her lapse in anticipating this is inexcusable.

With a last gurgle, the Trandoshan goes limp, and Phasma drops him gracelessly to the floor. “Shut it,” she says, and starts frisking his pockets.

“I didn’t say anything.”

“I’ve worked with you long enough to feel the judgment radiating off you.”

“You should’ve—”

“I said, shut up.”

Hux shuts up. He forgets sometimes that she’s no longer his subordinate. He’s no longer her commanding officer. And she’s faster and stronger than he is.

“How much longer?” she asks, taking up guard by the door. Properly, this time. Only problem is that it’s directly at his back, and having her out of his line of sight makes the hairs at the back of his neck stand on end. Hux squashes down his paranoia, and tries to keep from glancing over his shoulder every minute or so. This part of the plan is down to him now.

He’s already sliced his way past this terminal’s meager firewalls. This isn’t a public dock, used mainly for loading and unloading cargo, and the security is mostly for show. It takes him seconds to bypass the security codes and get station master access, which in turn gets him access to all the logs and communications. These immediately get downloaded into the datapad he’s working on, which has also been set to transmit a copy to Phasma’s datapad and another to their ship’s computer. So that part in fact doesn’t take all too long.

Phasma doesn’t know about the other part of the plan, the one where he’s coding a backdoor into the system, one he’ll be able to access from anywhere in the sector. Cixin Station is a busy place, and information is a powerful tool, even in the hands of a man who, as far as the galaxy knows, is very much dead.

“Hux…”

“Five more minutes,” he snaps back. He can’t take too long, or she’ll get suspicious. The drawbacks of working with someone who knows him as well as Phasma. The logs have already downloaded, and messages, being larger sound files, are taking just a little longer. He reaches for the mug of caf on one of the console banks and has already taken a sip of the cold, bitter caf before he remembers: not his cup, not his caf. He spits it back into the cup with a grimace.

Pfassking muscle memory. It’s been a year since everything he’s ever known got blown to shit over Exegol, and somehow his brain sometimes still thinks he’s back at his desk, working way past zero hundred hours, running only on stimpaks and stale caf.

His datapad pings. Download complete.

“Okay, let’s go,” Phasma says, checking her comm.

“Wait!” He’s not quite done yet; it’s necessary to disguise the backdoor and hide his work. First Order coding language had its own unique markers, and though he has managed to unlearn a lot of his old habits and preferences since going on the run, this particular sector of space is still swarming with former Resistance members, and they happen to be a paranoid bunch.

“I’m leaving,” says Phasma curtly, smacking her hand down on the door’s control panel. “We have what we came for.”

“You karking—” Hux hammers in the last few lines of code and reboots the entire system. There's a command in his code that will erase all records of the reboot, as well as wipe all localised system history for the past ten minutes. Then for added measure he runs a search on Poe Dameron. It’s the first name that came to mind. Something to throw any potential investigators off track, and if they’re lucky, maybe it’ll send the Resistance command running around trying to figure out if there’s some kind of bounty on their general’s head.

Hux spins away from the terminal, grabs his datapad and gets to the door just as the tail end of Phasma’s duster whips around the corner.

“You're not going to do anything about the lizard?” he asks as he catches up to her lanky stride. She always walks so fast, and his long legs don’t even give him an edge here.

“I planted the sec-slice on him,” she says. “Shocked him a little too, for good measure.”

The sec-slice is an automated slicing tool that can be jammed into an astromech dataport. They’d used it to jam the doors and cut any alerts, and it can also be used to run basic slicing functions. Anyone finding it on the unconscious Trandoshan will assume he’d tried to hack the system, messed up and gotten shocked instead.

It’s a good idea, not one Hux would’ve thought of. He’d just have shot the thing. But their plan hinges on staying under the radar. No one here is supposed to suspect that they’ve been hacked. The plan is to make them think it’s a stupidly brazen yet successful robbery. May they should’ve left some deathsticks in there for further “evidence”.

Phasma comes to an abrupt halt in front of a turbolift and Hux almost runs into her. She shoots him a glare, and catches him in the side with her elbow, making him wheeze. “Stay alert!” she barks, like he’s one of her troopers. “Now’s not the time to disappear into your head.”

Hux pfassking knows that. The zoning out, the drift in attention; they’re not always things he’s hundred percent aware of doing. He doesn’t even know _why_ he’s doing it, it’s never happened before—or maybe he’s just had it drilled out of him. It’s shameful that he’s lapsed in a lifetime of training so quickly. The turbolift’s already crowded with several other beings, but they manage to cram themselves in, the doors closing inches from Hux’s nose. He briefly allows himself to long for the days when he’d have a turbolift all to himself, enough space to stretch his arms out and still not touch the side. A stupid thing to long for, considering the magnitude of all that he’s lost, but it distracts him from the smell of wet bantha filling the space. Why are there so many pfassking Wookies on this station?

Since the lift has reached its capacity, it travels on unhindered until it reaches the first stop. The doors have barely opened before Hux is jostled first one way, then the other, as beings brush past him on their way out. A hand lands on his shoulder, and he whirls teeth already bared for a fight, but it’s just Phasma. “Let’s leave here,” she says, and hauls him out the door, right before a load of passengers sweep into the mostly empty space.

“This isn’t our level,” he snaps, jerking his shoulder out of her grip, readjusting the collar of his coat. “We need to—”

“We can get there this way too, there's a train,” Phasma tells him. “I checked.”

“The pla—”

“We can sometimes not follow the plan, Mills.”

Mills, now that they’re in public. In fact Phasma has generally been pretty good at making sure to use his new name. It’s Hux who’s been having a harder time of it. He’d earned the name Hux with blood, sweat and tears, and now he’s just Mills Cent. Mills Cent is a drifter with nothing to his name. He’s named after a cat for star’s sake!

He's distracted by the sound and displacement of air as the train rushes into the station Phasma has guided them too. Once again, he’s jostled this way and that as passengers try to squeeze out while others try to wriggle in through whatever gaps in the crowd they can find. By the time Hux fetches up between a wall and another pfassking Wookie—why are there so many Wookies on this station?!—he’s beginning to feel very much like the unfortunate victim of a sarlacc, making his slow, painful way through its digestive tract.

At least the walking carpet’s not standing in front of him, and he manages to catch Phasma’s eye. She holds up a fist. Ten stops. He nods. Hopefully by then the crowd in this carriage will have thinned. Phasma’s fortunate, she’s managed to take up a spot near one of the doors, and even as he watches, a Twi’Lek woman manages to squeeze in through the doors right as they close. She manages because Phasma grabs her around her waist and physically hauls her in. The Twi’Lek twists around, her grateful smile growing even wider when she sees exactly how tall, and blonde, and muscular the Human who has helped her is.

Hux rolls his eyes. He’s pretty sure he can expect a visitor in the _Nexu_ tonight.

The maglev peels away from the station, and Hux slowly, by increments, allows himself to relax somewhat. The fact that the train’s running, and no announcement of any kind has been made already points towards a clean getaway. Plasma clearly has no concerns about it, judging from how deep engrossed she is flirting with her new _friend_.

Hux chews on his lip, staring absently out the window, which shows nothing more than the grey tunnel wall. His hands itch for his datapad, tucked away in the inside pocket of his baggy coat, but he doesn’t want to take it out. There’s a chance it might get knocked out of his hands, or get targeted for pickpocketing, or maybe the Wookie at his back might actually be a Resistance spy, just waiting for him to reveal himself. Or a syndicate operative. There are simply too many people around, breathing and existing in his space, and he no longer has the power to be rid of them with an angry command.

The train slows, and the Wookie moves away, the crowd parting before its furry bulk like water. Like his troops used to part before him. Someone else siddles into the space the Wookie has left behind, a human, male, older, shorter than Hux, greying hair falling into his eyes. He bumps into Hux as the train starts moving again, and apologises without taking his eyes off his datapad. Hux discreetly peers down to see what he’s reading, but he doesn’t understand the language.

This is his life now.

He turns away from his fellow passenger, and catches a glimpse of himself in the reflection of the window. He scowls, and his reflections scowls back, before he looks away. The beard reminds him too much of his father. There’d been a time, just after the New Republic forces had laid siege to Arkanis, and in the month they’d followed, before Mercurial Swift had smuggled them off the planet, all of Brendol Hux’s grooming had gone out the window, along with his temper and what little sobriety he’d cultivated before then. Hux, still young enough to occasionally idolize the idea of a father when Brendol wasn’t paying any attention to him, had admired that beard, that great bushy growth slightly darker than his hair that had managed to make Brendol look a little more commanding and a little less brutish. And because Maratelle had hated it, even as she lamented Brendol’s weak chin in the same breath (only ever to Hux’s face though, who’d inherited that chin, along with his woefully distinctive hair. That, coupled with his mother’s slight frame, a sum of the worst parts of two miserable people, she’d sigh, despite being a thoroughly miserable woman herself).

This is the sum of his parts now—skinny, unkempt and miserable. Without the suppressants in his rations to curb the growth of facial hair, the beard had sprung up quickly. Incredibly useful, of course, for disguising himself, especially now that he’s dyed all his hair brown, but he still hates catching sight of himself. After a lifetime of cultivating order in all parts of himself, this messiness he’s forced to maintain in order to survive still nags at him. He compulsively smooths his hair back, feeling it spring back up under his hand without product to keep it down.

At least the dark bags under his eyes have faded. Going underground hasn’t exactly given him much to do, and he sleeps like the dead these days.

*

To absolutely no one’s surprise, Phasma’s new friend follows them off at their stop. Follows them back to where they have the _Nexu_ docked. Follows them onto the _Nexu_. Follows Phasma back to her cabin. Doesn’t she have a job? That she was on her way to?

“Just-just keep it down!” he sputters at the closed door, then completely bypasses his own cabin next to Phasma’s. Though it’s not much of a living space anyway: it had once been a maintenance and charging room for astromechs. The ‘fresher in his _Steadfast_ quarters had been larger.

He settles into the bunk in the common area and starts pulling up the data they’d stolen from the station. Any trafficker worth their salt knows how to grease the right palms to ensure their passage remains unregistered on the logs, but then the palms they grease also have to belong to someone who believes in honor amongst thieves. This cargo though, if their informant is right, is far too valuable to just let pass through Cixin Station without making note of it.

Hux scrolls through the list. The Order had dealt with smugglers and traffickers on the regular, especially to funnel a workforce into the production plants on Zhadalene, Korrus, Belladoon and other worlds. He’s learned to recognize the terms this kind of scum used in their trade for their manifests to fly under the radar. And he finds it. About a ton of frozen nerf steaks have recently been shipped in by Bovi Foods. While Bovi Foods does supply spaceports on the Outer Rim and some sectors in the Unknown Region with food, there’s no reason for them to ship nerf steaks to Cixin, not when Cixin already has a steady supply of protein from the frozen ocean moon it orbits.

He scans the rest of the document but that was the only thing that stands out. Nerf steaks are people. Nerf steaks from the Batuu System…

Of course that could mean anything. Batuu is home to the Black Spire outpost, which had its tendrils everywhere in the galaxy, and a shipment of nerf steaks from the sector don’t necessarily correspond to what he’s looking for. But he’d lost a lot of good people on Batuu, people he hadn’t been able to keep track of properly once Ren had dragged him onto _Steadfast_ and some of them never showed up on the list of the dead.

Scowling, lest someone come in and accuse him of caring, Hux digs a little deeper. Names. Ident codes. Mug shots, if he’s lucky. If the Hutt Cartel had swooped in and taken his people, they’d have some way of identifying them. The harsh regimented training First Order soldiers and troops went through usually makes them fairly hardy slaves. And there’s always some kind of bounty out of officers, either individuals seeking revenge, or the Resistance looking to make an example of them in their rigged courts.

Since the fall of Starkiller Base, his bridge crew has changed, but there are some Hux had tried to keep a hold on. Loyal officers like Mitaka, Unamo and Opan, whom he could all trust, to some extent, to watch his back, knowing that their goals aligned with his own. He’d left them all behind on Batuu.

Having regrets, Hux has learned, is a futile endeavor. Lingering on the past, on what could have been, gets no one anywhere. He has no regrets for anything he has done because at that moment in time, he has always chosen the best course of action. Admittedly, there are some consequences he hadn’t anticipated, such as the complete dissolution of the First Order. The return of the galaxy to utter chaos and separatism.

Phasma’s sudden reappearance in his life. His own survival, really.

Hux unconsciously rubs his chest, where the scars of the blaster burn still linger. There’s only so much armour can do when one is shot at close range, and he’s going to carry the reminder of it until he dies. Unlike his scar, unlike the complete destruction of all that he’s known, there are some things he can try to fix. There’s a number affixed to the manifest and he recognises the last six digits of Opan’s ident code. Of course, he thinks, it’d be Opan that made it. The man’s as hardy as a Sullustan cockroach.

*

“Opan,” says Phasma flatly, once she’s reemerged from her cabin. Her friend is in the refresher, using up all of their meager water rations. Though Hux has wisely not decided to comment on it. This is Phasma’s ship, and it’s only by whatever small opportunist grace she affords him that he’s aboard it and not floating dead in Exegol’s orbital debris ring. He remembers now that she never liked Opan.

“Possibly others,” he says. “Your troops.”

Phasma hmms. He recalls she didn’t really much care for them either. Nor does she like him, yet here he is. Here they are.

“This was your idea, remember?”

“I know,” she says testily, looking now like she regrets it very much. “What are we going to do with them once we’ve freed them?”

Hux falters. He hadn’t thought about that. Ordinarily the First Order never bothered to negotiate for hostages, unless they were high ranking officers with vital information And those were often expendable. There’s never been a need for him to go after his people, and it’s not like they have the space now for a dozen other crew members. What will he even do with them?

“I suppose we could just let them go,” he says lamely. “They can go underground. Hide.”

He assumes it doesn’t really matter what happens to them, as long as they don’t end up Resistance hands. They’re his crew, they’re more than capable of taking care of themselves. And they deserve better than slavery at the hands of disgusting xenos.

“Careful, Hux,” says Phasma, her eyes narrowing, though her mouth has started curving into a smirk. “One would think you’ve started to grow a conscience.”

“This was your karking idea,” he reminds her. “Now get your girlfriend out of the ‘fresher. We need to go find this Carmine you've been communicating with.”


	2. Chapter 2

There are a lot of people on Cixin Station. They make her think of the crowd at the Festival of the Ancestors on Pasaana, loud, colourful, though not as friendly. And the overwhelming crush of bodies reminds her more of the dreams she has some nights of the faceless, hooded mass of figures that had watched on as Palpatine had tried to kill her on Exegol. There’s still something quite different about a crowd on a ship, on a space station, especially when they’re crammed end to end like this, squeezing against her, past her wherever they’re heading. Even Jakku’s busy trader’s markets had had more breathing room than this. But generally most things on Jakku had been wide, and open, and empty, and most of the time, it’d just been her.

“This way,” says Zorii, her hand tightening around Rey’s and tugging her into a tiny alcove. How she’d found it just by sight, Rey will never know; there’s no signage, and it’s tucked behind a stand selling brightly coloured cloths.

“Who is this M anyway?” she asks as Zorii leads them down a narrow winding corridor. Probably started out as a maintenance shaft, though now it just seems to have become a shortcut that runs right through to the heart of the station. Reaching out through the Force, Rey can sense a whole network of such repurposed maintenance corridors, criss-crossing above and below them, teeming with people despite the fact that they can barely walk two apace. So many people crowded onto this station.

“An information broker!” Zorii yells over her shoulder. “Has people connected to the Order. Or what’s left off them anyway. She’s Finn and Jannah’s best bet, for now.”

“Can we trust her?”

“Can you trust anyone on this rusted junk pile?” Zorii’s got her helmet on, so Rey can only hear the grin in her voice. Well, Rey thinks, I trust you. It’s getting easier now, trusting people, but somehow it’s still easier to do it with people like Zorii, Finn, herself. The ones fractured on the inside, in some way or another. “We can pay for this information, that should be good enough for them.”

“So you’ve dealt with this M before?”

“Not directly,” says Zorii. “She usually works with a go between called Carmine, who is known to Starling, but this time I’ve managed to arrange a direct meeting. Things have changed. No thanks to you.”

Rey mms, her free hand drifting to the lightsaber hilt at her hip. According to Zorii, M doesn’t take sides, and she’s agreed to meet in neutral territory. But they’ve come armed nonetheless. It’d be foolish not to.

“Don’t worry,” says Zorii.

“I’m not worried,” Rey tells her.

Zorii stops in her tracks, twisting around without letting go of Rey’s hand, so she can crowd her up against the rusty bulkhead. A tap of her hand retracts her visor, revealing her large, dark eyes. “I don’t have the Force like you, but I’m good at reading people. What’s going on, Rey?”

“It’s nothing,” says Rey, looking down at their intertwined fingers. “There’s just a lot of people here.”

“Is it too much?”

“Not yet.” She chews her lip. “It might be, soon.” There’s something else though, something Zorii wouldn’t quite understand even if Rey explains it to her—that there’s something about the station. It’s a nexus in the Force, threads of it running through the station, converging somewhere in its center. She can feel it, almost like a tug on her heartstrings and one of them leads right through her, down this maintenance corridor.

The Force, Rey knows, isn’t like fate, but sometimes there are nudges. Coincidences. She can still choose to walk away, to not follow this strange feeling down into the depths of Cixin, but if that’s where Zorii’s informant is, then that’s where she has to go.

Zorii lets go of her hand to cradle Rey’s head. She really has such pretty eyes. It’d be nicer if she didn't have gloves on, but Rey still briefly turns into the touch, closing her eyes to focus on the smell of oil and leather, the beat of Zorii’s pulse and the hum of her blood beneath her cheek. “We meet with this M, and then we’re gone. Finn and Jannah can hunt down Carmine if we have to.”

Rey nods. Zorii reseals her helmet and takes her hand again. They move deeper into the station.

It’s a new thing for her, being able to sense these shifting undercurrents of the Force. She hadn’t had it before Exegol. Before she’d almost died. Maybe it’s just all the people. There are definitely far more people than she’s ever seen, packed into such a place. In space! Even the _Supremacy_ had been filled with vast stretches of empty corridor, though Resistance intel had estimated it to be staffed by at least several tens of thousands of personnel.

Or it could be because she’d spent most of her time with the Resistance, with their ever dwindling numbers before Poe’s final call had brought the rest of the galaxy to their aid. Yet even then, most of them had drifted off again after the battle against the Final Order. Maybe it’s something Ben had left behind, and she tries not to think of her grandfather whispering into his head since before he was born. But so far she hasn't heard any voices besides her own. It’s just her in her own head, and maybe that’s the problem.

She hasn’t heard the Jedi since Exegol. She misses them.

But with Finn and Jannah, she has the chance to start something new, try something different. And really, she just wants to go out into the galaxy and help. Whoever they find, she’s not going to try talking them into being trained. They can be free to choose their own paths, the way she finally is.

Zorii stops before another alcove, but this time there is some signage, though not in any language Rey can read, until she sees in smaller Aurebesh letters: BAR. “So babe,” says Zorii, “how about a drink?”

Rey grins. “Only if you’re buying.”

It’s not too bad looking, as bars go, though Rey can't really judge; she hasn’t been in all that many. There’s much less smoke than she’d expected, and what little there is actually smells kind of nice, woodsy and slightly sweet, instead of like something coming out the back end of an old speeder bike. Zorii heads for the bar and orders them some drinks—nonalcoholic, Rey hopes—while she takes a look around. It’s not very busy, in fact it’s the emptiest Rey has seen a place be on Cixin. Customers mill around small tables, talking quietly, drinking solemnly. Maybe they’re still early, though she’s not sure what would count as early on a space station. Surely it’s seventeen-hundred somewhere.

Zorii comes back with drinks, pressing a full glass into Rey’s hand. “Tonic for you,” she says, “vodka picaberry for me.” She takes a sip of her drink, as red as her bodysuit. “M’s over in the back. Apparently she owns the bar too.”

Rey sips carefully at her bitter drink, looking carefully around as they navigate between tables to the back, but no one leaps out to stop them. It turns out M is the source of most of the fragrant smoke, the woman exhaling a small stream of smoke between her lips as she watches them approach with narrowed eyes.

“Zorii Bliss,” she says, once they’ve seated themselves on small uncomfortable stools at her table. “I’ve heard of you.” She seems more interested in Rey though, her eyes lingering on the lightsaber clipped to her hip.

“You have information we want,” Rey begins, and Zorii quickly holds up her hand. She wants to do this. But Rey would rather get straight to the point. Still, she bites her tongue and lets Zorii direct the meeting.

It turns out on Cixin, they start with the haggling, which surprises Rey a little, since she’d been under the impression they’d already agreed on the price. “We came in person,” argues Zorii. “You’ve got your eyes on us. You know who she is now.” She jerks her head at Rey, who blinks over the rim of her glass. “That should be good enough for you.”

M’s lips purse. She’s not a very large woman, bony wrists showing from the cuffs of an off-blue shirt. Her pale eyes are almost the same colour, and her blonde hair, braided back in a crown that reminds Rey a little of Leia, has started fading to white. When Zorii had mentioned M had Order connections, Rey had assumed the information broker must have once been an officer or a trooper like Finn, but unless she’d escaped a long time ago, M doesn’t carry herself like one. Her careful wariness, the dangerous gleam in her eyes, reminds Rey more of Zorii, of Poe, than of Finn. And she slouches terribly.

“You want records of the Stormtrooper training program,” she says. “That’s incredibly valuable information, and it was very hard to come by. And you think I’d give it up just for a look at her face?”

“She’s the last Skywalker,” Zorii hisses. “The last Jedi.”

“That doesn’t mean anything in these parts. Folks consider them more trouble than they’re worth.”

“You don’t just deal with people in this sector,” argues Zorii.

“And her identity is valuable information,” M rebutts. “Why are you so eager to give it away?” She rounds on Rey. “Do you want to spend the rest of your life running from bounty hunters? Your kind get hunted for all kinds of _special collections_.”

Rey shrugs. It’s going to get out sooner or later. There are still old bounties out on her, with her name and her face attached. Some older versions actually still contain details on the nature of her powers, before someone—she assumes it must have been Kylo Ren in his role as Supreme Leader—had those pulled and the information redacted. “I’d like to see them try,” she says mildly.

M looks at her thoughtfully.

“This is outdated information. When Brendol Hux died—”

“There was another Hux in the Order?”

The older woman snorts. “Yes, there were two of them. The records date back to the elder’s death, if you’re looking for anything after that, you’re out of luck.”

“Fine,” says Zorii. “We’ll take that. In exchange for fifty thousand credits, and another good hard look at Rey.”

“The jealous type, hmm?” M winks at her. “I’ll even give you a sample, the first hundred rows of data. Sector, planet, and planetary region. Some have last names, some don’t. They were never going to return the children, so they often didn’t bother with the personal details.” Though her voice remains light and casual, Rey detects an old, angry bitterness in her, scarring over a deep sense of loss.

“They took your child from you too,” she says. “A long time ago.”

M frowns. “Stop poking around in my head, girl, or I’ll have you out of here with no information.”

Rey winces as Zorii jogs her painfully in the side in warning. “Sorry,” she says, “you were projecting, a little.”

“You keep your Force senses to yourself.”

Rey nods. “Yes, ma’am.” But she still sends out a careful exploratory tendril. The woman’s a Force null, so she won’t notice it. Rey just has to keep her questions to herself. But there’s nothing more beyond that bitterness, the anger, the old, sad sorrow. Whatever had happened, M seems to have moved past it. There’s no malice either, no intent to deceive, just an eagerness to be done with their deal and see the backs of them.

Rey taps Zorii lightly on the back of her hand, and Zorii, who’s been going over the sample data, nods. “We have a deal. We’ll transfer you the credits, you give us the rest of the data.”

“Yes,” says M. “Let me get in touch with my associate, he’s the one with the complete data packet. It’s over a thousand terabytes of data and the files aren’t exactly in the best condition. Old Imp systems and all. You’d probably want to check them too before you walk off with them.”

“You don’t even have all the information on you?” Rey exclaims.

“It’s a security measure!” M retorts. “I can’t just take people for their word, I’d be dead in a week in this line of business.”

“Maybe you should try another line of work,” Rey suggests.

“And miss out on all the excitement?” A wide grin spreads across M’s face. “I don't do this because there’s nothing out there for me, Jedi, I do this because I _like_ it. Information is power. And in truth, I’ve been sitting on this bit of info a long time.”

“That just means you could have sold it a long time ago,” says Zorii. She sounds sceptical, and Rey can’t blame her. M _is_ in turns unexpectedly accommodating and yet frustratingly evasive. There’s still no sign of that data. And she can sense it, like current drifting over her skin, making her hair stand on end—the Force, that strange nexus. Something will happen. Is already happening here. She grips her knee, bracing herself.

“And have the First Order after me?” M is saying in the meantime, shaking her head. “No. They came and they took everything I had, and when that happens, you’re lucky if you’re even alive at the end of it. You know how it is.” And she fixes a hard stare at Zorii. Rey, feeling the pang in her chest as though it’s her own, takes Zorii's hand in hers.

“They’re all gone for now and that’s good,” continues M. “And now we just get on with our lives.” She takes a long drag of her waterpipe, and exhales the smoke in little circles. Rey watches in fascination, following as they expand before losing their shape and dissipating. Then suddenly she feels it, that surge in the Force threads, and a light on M's comm starts blinking.


	3. Chapter 3

Archex hasn’t seen the boot-licking, scum-sucking little weasel in almost two years, but he’d recognize that sneer anywhere, even with the ratty beard and the terrible mousy-brown dye-job. “You!” he shouts as he’s slammed against the wall. “You’re supposed to be dead!”

“ _You’re_ supposed to be dead!” Armitage yells back, spittle flying from his lips. Archex lashes out with his fist, but Armitage ducks out of the way, scuttling out of reach. Of course this means he has to let Archex go, and Archex whips out the only weapon he has at hand at the moment—his whittling knife.

It’s not very impressive as weapons go. Armitage’s eyes focus on the blade, and a smug grin spreads across his narrow face. There’s a rigidness in his right forearm that Archex recognizes, ready for the twist that will release the monomolecular blade he has hidden up his sleeve. Of course the bastard still runs around with that. Archex knows his little knife won’t stand up to that, but he’s whittled wood far harder than flesh with it, and he’s confident he’ll be able to get in enough fatal stabs before Armitage cuts his throat.

Or maybe he’ll walk away from this one again. What’s that Vi likes to say? Third time lucky. But doesn’t that mean he should have died the first two times, with Phasma and then with Kath? Or maybe he’ll look at it this way, the way Vi likes to, with optimism; this time he’ll get out unscathed.

“Put that thing away,” says a voice. Deep, female, familiar. Archex’s blood runs cold, colder than it already had when Armitage had strolled into his office. His chest hurts and his lungs cramp and he hopes neither of them notice that his sharp inhale is almost a wheeze.

His office isn’t large, and Phasma's presence still manages to fill the room. Where Armitage looks like he’s been wrung out and hung up to dry, Phasma continues to bear herself with that dangerous predatory grace, even if she does look a little more worn. No more shining chrome armor, no more lance. She’s dressed as a smuggler, wearing that scuffy, cobbled together uniform almost every other smuggler seems to wear; cargo pants, an off-white shirt, a heavily scuffed nerf-leather jacket and heavy boots. She’s grown her hair out, and it’s pulled back from her face and trails down her back in a braid. There’s a blaster at her hip, another strapped to her thigh and that’s just what Archex can see. He knows all too well from painful experience that Phasma can be even more devious than Hux when it comes to concealed weaponry.

It takes him another moment to connect the dots between _how_ and _why,_ and then he has to put his face in his hands and laugh. Or cry. Both, maybe. His two worst enemies watch in silence. At the very least, they don’t try to kill him while he slowly loses his mind.

“Mills Cent. Oh stars,” he groans, “I should’ve known. Millicent. Really, Hux.”

“Be quiet!” Hux snarls.

“So.” He settles carefully back in his chair and sets the knife down. Against the both of them, it’ll be useless anyway, and it frees up his dominant hand for the blaster he has concealed under the seat. “What brings you here? Mills Cent and Breen.” He snorts softly at the sound of their aliases coming out of his mouth.

“So you’re Carmine?” asks Phasma. Her voice is brisk, businesslike, as though they both hadn’t tried to kill each other the last time they’d been in the same room. As though she hadn’t almost managed that, if it hadn't been for Vi. Archex almost admires her for that cold efficiency. He still dreams about her sometimes, her voice hissing angry nothings in his ear as his helmet’s display shorts out and the poison burns through his lungs.

He grips the knee of his gammy leg. “Yes.” No point in lying now that he’s been found.

Armitage snorts. “You went from Cardinal to Carmine and thought no one would notice?” And because _his_ cold efficiency is mostly feigned, and because he can’t leave well enough alone, he asks. “So how did you survive? That spy, Starling, she took you off the _Absolution_.”

“I defected and joined the Resistance,” says Archex simply. And because he knows it’ll make Armitage’s blood boil. “Like you did, or so I heard.”

“I did not!” Armitage’s voice is pitched high enough Archex hopes someone by the bar might notice. “I’d never join such a disorganized, delusional bunch of filthy idealists like you. I was doing what was best for the Order, after our useless Supreme Leader and that weasel Pryde—”

Oh stars, he shouldn’t have said anything. Having to hear Armitage rant turns out to be worse than being forced to listen to one of his propaganda speeches. Out from under the ever-watching and listening eyes and ears of FO High Command, and probably weaned off the cocktail of stimulants and suppressants they put in the water, Armitage can apparently really let loose. Yet before he can work himself into a proper lather, Phasma elbows him hard in the gut. He folds, wheezing, legs almost buckling, and he’s forced to grab onto a shelf for support. It rattles dangerously, and Archex eyes his potted plants in alarm, even as he imagines how satisfying it would be if one of them were to fall on Armitage’s head.

Phasma goes on, as though she’d merely swatted away an annoying insect. “What do you know about the cargo brought in by the _IE432-Glim_?” she asks. “The nerf steaks.”

“You mean the slaves,” Archex says shortly. The slavers and the syndicates may use the code, but he doesn’t see why on the outside should. Why keep up the dehumanization? Though coming from these two, it’s no surprise. “Why? What do you want with them?”

Armitage straightens, rubbing his chest. “That’s none of your business.” It comes out in a raspy gasp, as though he can’t catch a full breath. Phasma couldn’t have elbowed him that hard. And Archex knows all too well now what that feels like, for every breath to always feel a little too tight, like someone has welded iron bands across his chest. He almost rubs his own chest in sympathy before he catches himself.

“You want the information from me, so it’s my business now too,” Archex tells him. Oh how the mighty have fallen. Armitage has always been more bark than bite, and now without the power of his office behind him, he’s just as skinny and useless as Brendol has made him out to be. There’s a hungry, almost desperate gleam in his eyes, and there’s still a dark part of Archex that he’s buried deep but been unable to get rid off entirely that’s warmed by it, the satisfaction of seeing a former rival brought so pathetically low.

The rest of him just feels sorry for Armitage. Stars, he knows he’s gotten soft, but still, it’s _Armitage Hux_.

“No, really,” he tells them, when they keep staring stonily at him. “You can kill me, but I won’t tell you where they are until you tell me what you’re going to do with them? Sell them? Use them for your schemes?”

“My _schemes_?” Armitage repeats, brows crawling up his messy hairline, an edge of hysteria in his voice. “What do you think I’m doing, hanging around on a throne, plotting my return? Those are _my people_ , they deserve to be fr—”

He trails off, looking a little stunned by his own words. Archex finds himself trading a cautious look with Phasma. There’s a weary resignation in her eyes, one he recognises. He’d seen it in his own face, the months after he’d escaped with Vi Moradi, recovering his wounds against all odds, undergoing Organa’s deprogramming. Learning to recognize how the First Order had harmed him even if they’d first saved him, how Brendol Hux and his programming had used him and abused him, how what he’d been made into—a knife, a weapon, and unquestioning blunt instrument to be wielded against others—had never been for his own benefit and only to further the ambitions and greed of a select few. Having to learn how to live again in a galaxy without order.

When it comes to living in the galaxy at large, Phasma seems have done a better job of it than he has, but then she hadn’t been raised in the First Order. Maybe she’s never been there in the first place. After all, her truest loyalty has only ever been to herself. She’d even killed her own brother, just to tie up loose ends on Parnassos. And he knows how fast she adapts, considering how quickly she'd risen up to take over his position.

Archex doesn’t trust her to have had a change of heart, but he can at least depend on her being pragmatic. Armitage is more of an unknown variable, but hopefully his newfound struggle with whatever wretched bit of a conscience he has left will distract him.

“They always split up the cargo in ports like these,” he tells them. “Easier to move and sell. I got two of them out. From the 120th Regiment. MT-1265 and MT-1293.” Now Belin and Kurs, on the way to meet further Whitesun contacts who will set them up on a quiet, remote planet. Hopefully they will make a life for themselves there. Not that he expects these two to care.

“Right, right,” says Armitage impatiently. “And the others? Opan?”

Trust the bastard to prioritise his higher ranking officers. It’s why Archex goes for the lower ranks first, because really, sometimes it feels like he’s the only one who cares. Really truly cares that each one of those “bucketheads”, the figures inside the smooth white Betaplast armor are people. Even the Resistance, for all their talk of deprogramming and relocation, forgets far too often, or just can't afford to care. “We can’t always keep track of all of them, but if it’s Opan you’re looking for, the Hutts always like having disposable operatives they can use for wetwork.”

It’s no surprise really that Opan has made it. The man’s always been a nasty piece of work, on par with Phasma. They’d worked together under Brendol, though Opan’s expertise had not put him in direct competition with Archex the way Phasma’s had. What surprises him though is that Armitage has managed to lose such a valuable asset, considering his usual tight grip on his troops and his various loyal officers. Though Archex _has_ heard that the rise of the new Supreme Leader had shaken up the ranks. For all their secrecy, some kinds of First Order gossip tended to travel quickly beyond their fleet.

“Do you know where they might have taken him?” asks Phasma. If Archex’s being honest with himself, she’s the bigger surprise here. He can see Armitage’s need for control to lead him towards this kind of path, trying to keep a hold on his power in some way or another. But Phasma, what does she get out of this? Unless Opan also happens to know something about her past.

“Oh for the love of—” snarls Armitage, patience running dry. He whips aside his coat and reaches for his blaster. But Archex has always been a soldier and is quicker on the draw. He has his own weapon out and pointed at Armitage’s head before the man can even blink in surprise.

To his credit, Armitage doesn’t waver as he raises his empty hands. “Tell us where they’ve taken my crew.”

Archex looks warily from him to Phasma. He can’t believe he’s choosing to trust (just briefly, for now) either of them, but he also really, really wants to be rid of them. And while he might get away with shooting Armitage, he can’t take them both out. “You pay me what we negotiated, and I will give you a list of their secondary locations. I cannot guarantee you will find Opan there. Or anyone else you’re looking for.”

Phasma exchanges a look with Armitage, then jerks her head towards a corner of the room. Archex holsters his blaster in a show of good faith, and sits back down to convince them he’s not going to try to make a break for it. This time he puts his hand within reach of the panic button on his desk, disguised as melted solder slag. It triggers cameras angled at both doorways and sends an alert to M’s comm. At least she'll know to find them should they decide to shoot him anyway.

He keeps an eye on them as they huddle together, whispering fiercely. It’s almost like watching these two scum-suckers conspire on the _Finalizer_ again, though back then Armitage would never have allowed Phasma to reach out and shake him the way she does now. He takes the opportunity to study Armitage a little further, curious to see what freedom from the Order—though he’d bet his best cast iron pan that Armitage considers it anything but freedom—has done to his former rival and superior officer. There’s definitely something more shrunken about him, deflated, though maybe that’s just the tired hunch of his shoulders, the shoulder-length long hair unbound from it’s old hard shellacked shell, the ragged hem of his brown overcoat, a poor facsimile of the thick gaberwool coat he’d loved to swan about in.

It’s been a year since the First Order had fallen at Exegol, and all manner of strange gossip had come from that. Some say that the old Emperor had returned to possess Kylo Ren and take over the Order. Others mentioned Sith within the ranks of the Order. There’d been troopers in crimson gear not unlike his old captain’s armour, and honestly, he’d briefly considered joining a salvage fleet to poke around the ruins of the planet until his common sense had taken hold again.

He wonders how these two survived. They’re both presumed dead, Phasma on the _Supremacy_ and Hux over Exegol. Surely the Resistance or anyone else would pay handsomely for their capture, two of the First Order’s most important personnel, war criminals the like the galaxy hasn’t seen in a long time. Especially Armitage. If he gets in touch with the right people, Archex might just get paid enough to buy a whole planet if he turned him in. He’d get off this rusty station, repay his debts to Vi and M, and find someplace quiet to settle down. He’d be able to help more former First Order troops, rescue more slaves and set them free. Do some good in the galaxy to make up for the evil he’s abetted.

Archex cancels the alert. Hopefully M hasn’t called for security, though she’s generally slow to go for aid when it’s him. Not a nice person, M, but most of the galaxy isn’t nice. He’d caught a lucky break, capturing Vi all those months ago.

They finish their argument, then turn as one back to him. Phasma’s expression remains relatively neutral, though Armitage’s has settled back into his usual unpleasant scowl. “So,” asks Archex, crossing his leg at the ankle. His knee twinges, but he ignores it. The insouciance is feigned. They don’t have to know that though. “What’s the verdict?”

“We pay you the eight thousand credits we discussed before the meeting,” Phasma says. Armitage looks like he’s swallowed a lemon, but keeps his mouth shut. So it seems he’s not only no longer in power, but not even the one in charge. That must sting. “You give us the locations, and whatever else you may know.”

“I know a lot,” he says. “It’s worth more than eight thousand.”

“Or we could shoot you,” she says pleasantly. Yeah, he figured as much. And unlike Armitage, who, for all his slowness, admittedly had pretty good aim the last time Archex checked, she’s very fast on the draw. She’ll shoot first, and she won’t miss. And he doesn’t want to give her the chance to kill him again.

“Just the information on the cargo of the _IE432-Glim_ , as initially agreed upon. And…” he sucks on his teeth, reluctant to reveal his hand, but this is also important for him. “Any other ex-Order troopers you encounter, let them go too. If you can, send them my way.”

“Oh stars,” Armitage crows. “Is this what you do now? Rescue—”

Phasma makes another motion with her elbow and he shuts up, quickly sidestepping out of reach. “What do you think _we’re_ doing?”

Armitage shoots her a dirty glare, rubbing at his chest again, confirming Archex’s suspicion of some kind of injury. “It’s different,” he grumbles. Pulling out an old datapad Archex recognizes as FO tech, the sunburst symbol in the back scratched away to illegibility, he starts transferring the credits.

Archex swivels around in his chair, searching for a blank datachip he can transfer the data to. “It’s hard, isn’t it? Growing a conscience.”

“It’s not a conscience. They’re my crew, and my _responsibility_.” There’s something petulant in Armitage’s voice that reminds Archex intensely of the boy he used to be, scared and snivelling yet simultaneously sure of his own convictions and the power behind them. Though he probably hadn’t been much better. Quicker with fists than with words, but still mean and cruel the way children revelled in when rewarded for it. All the more reason he needs to support their endeavor, no matter how strange it may be. Armitage can think what he wants of his motivations, but the more troopers get to go on and live normal lives, the better.

He still hesitates a moment, watching the data load. They’re not good people. Armitage could be trying to rebuild the Order. After all, hadn’t the Empire fled to the Rim, to the Unknown Regions? It’s what has brought them to this place, lost children from the edge of the galaxy, fighting over scraps left behind by previous generations. But Archex doesn’t want to fight anymore. And he can tell somehow, that Phasma and Hux don’t want to either.

“Don’t look for me again,” he warns them as he passes them the chip. His comm chimes and when he checks, the eight thousand are all there. He immediately arranges a quarter to be converted to the sector’s local currency and transfers the rest to different anonymous accounts. “If I see either of you again, I’ll let the Resistance know you’re both still alive.”

“I could shoot you now, and spare us all the trouble,” Armitage sneers.

Archex spread his arms. “Go ahead. Do it. Shoot me.” It’s a risk, tempting these two, and right after the words leave his mouth he curses himself for his stupidity. Phasma actually does look like she’s considering it. To head her off, in case she calls his bluff, he quickly adds, “You think I don’t have safeguards against this? My boss knows you’re here. We’ve got your faces on camera. Kill me and you’ll spend the rest of your short, miserables lives running, I guarantee it.”

“It’ll make shooting you even more satisfying,” Phasma says. “And I do so hate leaving loose ends.” Her hand drifts towards her blaster and Archex closes his eyes, resigned. If he survives this, _Vi_ might just kill him. But the killing bolt never comes.

When he opens his eyes again, they’re both gone. The door slides shut with a loud thud and he makes an immediate note to spend at least a quarter of those eight thousand credits on a better locking mechanism. He hopes they’ll keep their word, and that he’ll never see either of them again.

Archex pulls out his comm, about to let M know that he’s in the clear when he notices that she’s been trying to reach him for the past ten minutes. He’s about to call back when the door—the one leading to the bar—is pulled open with a violent screech. Two women tumble into his office, one in a helmet, and the other—the other is wielding a lightsaber.


	4. Chapter 4

The light on M’s comm keeps blinking. She smacks her hand down on it, but it continues winking away.

“You should probably get that,” says Zorii. “Might be important.”

“It’s not,” says M, still smiling a fakely pleasant smile. “Just a contact. He can take care of himself.”

Rey senses more though. The Force humms around her, as though the threads she senses have been pulled taut and plucked. The woman _is_ concerned, not so much for the person, but for the sudden unexpected coincidence. “Your associate. The one with the money. It’s Carmine, isn’t it?” she asks. “And he’s in trouble.”

M’s mouth twists, and she suddenly looks intensely, disconcertingly familiar. “How do you know that?” She shakes her head. “Never mind. Karking Force users. Don’t worry your pretty little head about it, Carmine’s one of my best men, he can take care of himself.”

Rey smacks her palm down on the table. “We _need_ that information!” Zorii turns to her, and Rey doesn’t need to see her face to know she’s being given _a look_. She’s probably given too much away, but she can’t bring herself to care right now. She needs this information. Finn needs this information.

She leaps to her feet, Zorii rising along with her. After a moment’s hesitation, M unfolds herself and too, and wow, she’s tall. Taller than both Rey and Zorii. “Where’s your guy?” barks Zorii.

“Back office.” M jerks her thumb over her shoulder. She’s got a hand on her blaster now, looking worried. “He really is in trouble?”

“There are three people in there,” says Rey, reaching out. Three people and a lot of anger. There’s an edge of age to those feelings, old grudges, grievances from a long time ago.

“It’s just supposed to be him,” says M, already making for the back office, but Rey puts out her hand, urging her to stay back. She reaches for her lightsaber.

“I’ll take care of it.”

“You’re not going in there alone!” Zorii’s got her blaster out too, and her visor’s up, so she can fix Rey with the full force of her glare. “We have no idea who’s in there with him, and if we need act quickly—”

There’ll be some who can retrieve the information while she fights off the intruders. And M can’t be trusted. “Okay,” she says. “Stay close.”

The anger reaches a peak as they get to the door. It’s sealed from the inside, and Rey lightly shoves Zorii aside as she tries to slice it. “I’ll do this,” she says, extending her hand and reaching out for the tumblers and gears she can feel concealed within the door. It’s a simple mechanism to trip, but an old one, and when the door doesn’t slide open immediately she reaches deeper and _pulls_ , and it finally opens with an almighty screech. She ignites her lightsaber and rushes into the room.

Carmine is alone. The intruders have fled, and Rey can sense the brightness of their life forces grow fainter and fainter as they move away. But Carmine doesn’t look hurt and they don’t seem to have damaged anything, so she puts away her weapon and holds Zorii back when she makes for the back door.

“It’s fine. I think.” She rounds on Carmine, who’s still sitting in his chair looking partially bewildered and very annoyed, when M bursts in after them.

“I have their faces,” she announces, “we can put out a notice—”

“No!” Carmine yells unexpectedly. “Cancel that now. Now, M!” he repeats when the older woman hesitates.

She complies, but not without giving him a hard stare. Looks like they’ll be having words later, but that’s really none of Rey’s business. If Carmine’s fine, and the intruders have fled…

“The data,” she says, holding out her hand. “And we’ll pay and we’ll be on our way and you can sort out…” she gestures to the room at large, “this.”

“What data?” asks Carmine, turning to M.

She sighs. “File 40. The large one. Transfer it to them.”

“It’s encrypted.”

“They’ve paid for the password. Do it, Carmine.”

He scowls, but doesn’t argue further, just takes the datastick Zorii hands him and plugs it into the port of his terminal. As the data starts downloading into the stick, Zorii begins the transfer of credits, all fifty thousand. More money than Rey has ever paid for anything in her life, but information is worth hundreds of thousands of lives. If they can just return a fraction of these people to their families, it’d be worth it.

The terminal cheeps just as M receives a message on her comm. Both transfers are complete. The deal is done. Once the password checks out, they can leave.

It does. Zorii runs a quick check through the rows and rows of information and immediately sends a backup to her computer, making another copy of it on her datapad.

“We’re done here?” asks M. She looks eager to pounce on her associate, but she can only do that when they’re gone. “Great. Goodbye. Pleasure doing business with you.”

It wasn’t, not really. Rey hopes they’ll never have to see her again. She heads for the back door, the same entrance through which the intruders had left. Maybe there’s still a trace of them that she can track. There’s a mystery here, a connection, threads in the Force criss-crossing in the most unexpected way, and Rey is curious.

“Wait!” It’s Carmine. She turns.

“I know you! You’re Rey of Jakku. You were at Exegol!”

Rey nods. “Yes. Why do you ask?”

It’s there, at the tip of his tongue. She could give him a nudge and it would all come tumbling out of him. So she nudges, just a little. “Those people. What did they want from you?”

“Information on the cargo of the _IE432-Glim_. It docked two days ago. Carrying nerf steaks.” He blinks, caught off guard by the looseness of his tongue. But Rey is distracted by that term, nerf steaks. She knows what that means...

“People,” Zorii confirms grimly. “What did they want with them?”

M starts forward angrily, but Rey holds her back with a wave of her hand. “Tell me,” she urges Carmine, weaving the Force into her command. He manages to resist this time, but only briefly. “There are First Order hostages, taken from scuttled ships and captured escape pods. If the syndicates find them, they’re usually sold to spice mines. Chattel. Slaves.”

“So they’re slavers?”

“No!” Rey releases the compulsion. He’s fighting it far harder than he needs to and she really doesn’t want to hurt him.

“We want to help!” She can almost feel Zorii roll her eyes behind her helmet, but if Zorii can’t deal with it, she wouldn’t be here.

“Why would I trust you?” Carmine snaps. “You barge in here armed, poke around in my head, after those two—”

“Did they hurt you?”

He snorts. “No. You have your information. You should go.”

“You were in the Order, weren’t you?” Rey can feel Zorii stiffen beside her. She really hopes she doesn’t go for the blaster, and carefully steps back, putting herself between Zorii and the man, and a gentle hand on Zorii’s arm.

Carmine’s guarded look turns cornered. Rey needs to tread carefully now. The galaxy is full of them now, former FO officers and troopers. The ones from the lower ranks are easier to deal with, used to taking orders, often lost and confused, and Poe’s Resistance have their hands full deprogramming and rehabilitating them. Somehow part of the process involves meditation and basket weaving on Cerea.

But there are others, officers, those who’d just had a lot of power taken from them quite suddenly. Most of them had been killed over Exegol, but every now and then one turns up, usually in the process of doing something very dangerous out of desperation and rage.

Carmine doesn’t seem like one of them, but for Zorii’s sake she plays it safe.

“Yes,” he says heavily. “I was once part of the First Order. Captain Cardinal.”

“I know you,” Zorii hisses, her vocoder distorting it so it comes out like static. “The one in red. I _saw_ you.”

Carmine pales. “Where?”

“Kijimi.”

He closes his eyes, putting his head in his hands. For a long time nobody says anyone. M slips away, back towards the bar, and Rey lets her go. Their business with her is done. They have what they need.

Deep regret is writ large on Carmine’s face when he looks up again, and Rey can tell now he’s one of the good ones. There’s something in him that she also sees in Finn, but looking at Carmine now, she is so so glad Finn escaped before the Order hurt him like this, used him like they’d used this man and broken him irreparably inside.

“I remember,” he says. “We took the children—”

“You took until we had nothing left!” Zorii snarls. “Everything I’ve ever had is gone, because of your First Order. You! You watched. I saw you, all those years ago, in your red armour, watching as they took the children into your ship.”

“I know.” Carmine licks his bloodless lips. “I trained them.”

“I should kriffing _shoot_ you.”

“Yes,” says Carmine, even as Rey shouts, “No!” She shoots him a glare. She’s trying to mediate this!

“No one’s shooting anyone,” she says firmly, still keeping her hand over Zorii’s. The room crackles with suppressed energy, and she can almost see the lines in the Force, where things are headed if she doesn’t do this right. Carmine dead. Zorii hurt. She doesn’t want any of this. They’d just come for information.

“But you left before all this. Before Exegol. Before—”

He nods. “The Hosnian Cataclysm, yes. I was...rescued. By Starling, Leia Organa’s spy. I suppose I defected to the Resistance, though I do not consider myself one of their agents.”

“Why are you listening to this?” Zorii cries. She rips off her helmet and Rey sees the tears in her dark eyes, smudging the kohl around them. Her heart stutters at the sight; she’s never seen Zorii like this. Even when they'd gone back to Kijimi, floating above the rubble of the planet, Zorii drinking in silence while Rey held her, she’d bottled it all up inside. “There’s a little lockbox in me,” Zorii’d said. “That’s where the feelings I don’t want go. I don’t want to be sad. They’d already killed Kijimi long before this.”

But Rey has a lockbox of her own. She used to keep her parents there, the last time she'd seen them, somehow thinking that if she didn't think of those memories too much, if she just focused on the hope that they'd come back for her, she’d save the memories of the sound of her father’s voice, her mother’s face. Instead they'd faded until Kylo Ren had been able to use them against her. Now she keeps the memory of a different face in it, one gnarled and twisted with cruelty. The exhilaration of lightning bursting from her fingertips, the horror when she’d thought she’d killed Chewie. Putting that all away like that, that's probably not a good idea either.

A thought floats to her unbidden. _Bury your feelings deep down, Rey. They do you credit, but they may be used to serve the Dark Side._

She blinks. Is this...them? Or just another remnant? Nevertheless, with all due respect, she thinks, that’s stupid advice. There are some things that she’ll probably lock away in the back of her head forever, but she can still work through her feelings about them without turning. But it’s hard. She thinks of the satisfaction of watching Snoke die, the surge of triumph as she’d defeated his praetorian guards. Watching the reborn Emperor crumble away into dust, feeling more powerful than she'd ever had in her life. Right now, her body's humming in sync with Zorii’s stress, that agonising, rolling hate, and the dangerous desire to end all that pain with a blaster bolt through Carmine’s head.

“Please, Zorii,” she says softly. Takes the helmet from Zorii’s hands and drops it gently to the floor. “This won’t help you.”

“How do you know?” Zorii chokes through her tears. They drip down off her chin, spattering across her bodysuit. But she twines her fingers through Rey’s and presses her hand to her eyes, like she’s hoping Rey will help stem the flow of tears.

“I don’t,” says Rey honestly. “But it usually doesn’t.”

“Oh stars,” mutters Zorii, but she sounds a little calmer. Even with the stuffed nose. “You sound like Tico. _Saving what we love_. Oh my kriffing stars, you Resistance people.”

“They’re very idealistic,” Carmine interjects a little nervously.

“You.” Zorii points a threatening finger at him. “Shut up. Don’t remind me that you’re here.”

“I’m sorry,” Rey tells him. A quiet life, keeping his head down, staying out of the reach of the FO, helping the Resistance where he can; they’ve thrown all that in disarray. She hopes he can recover. “Are you sure those two—”

“They won’t be back,” he says, certainty in his voice, though his eyes keep flicking over to Zorii, who has hidden her face again behind her expressionless mask. “And if you find anyone, if they need help, anything...you can send them to me.”

“Why?” snarls Zorii. “So that you can enslave them again?”

“No.” He looks away, fidgeting with a snippet of carved wood from his desk. “I have contacts who...help people resettle. Usually on colony worlds. Quiet ones. Away from,” he gestures to the room at large, “everything. Only if they want to go.”

“We’re helping them find their families,” Rey tells him.

“I don’t know if Brendol Hux kept detailed records on that. He never cared where we came from. Only about our potential.” He sounds bitter, far more bitter than if Hux had been some nameless superior. Clearly there’s a history there.

“Have you checked your records?” she asks. “Would you like us to tell you?”

“It’s alright,” he says with a rueful smile. “I know where I’m from. I’d rather not return.”

Rey can understand. She nods. “Thank you for helping us.”

He gives her a slow nod in acknowledgement. Zorii’s already out the door, and Rey has to hurry to catch up, almost running into a vender of fried snacks, then getting yanked back by her belt as her lightsaber hilt gets caught in a nook in the wall. Tiny corridors like these—not good for lightsabers and long weapons. She’ll need to remember that when she trains.

“Zorii!”

Zorii doesn’t stop, and people jump out the way, press themselves against the wall as she barrels past.

“ _Zorri_!”

She stops so suddenly that Rey almost smacks nose first into her helmet. “Kriffing hells, Rey, why didn’t you give him a medal while you were at it. Congratulations! Not as much of a genocidal sociopath as you could have been.”

“He’s been hurt by them too.”

“Everyone’s been hurt by them! It’s not a contest!”

“No,” Rey agrees. “It doesn’t make what he’s done for them right. It probably never will, and he knows that. But he’s doing what he can now to make some things right. Where he can.”

“Ugh,” Zorii says, her voice sounding watery. “I hate crying, why am I crying.” She pulls off her helmet again, the rough motion tugging her hair free of its ties.

Rey takes the helmet and tucks it under her arm. She takes Zorii’s hand in the other. “I’m sorry,” she says.

“Why?” says Zorii roughly. “It’s not your fault.”

Wanton destruction for the sake of it. Her fingertips tingle at the memory and she quickly raises their intertwined hands to her lips, pressing them to the back of Zorii’s hand. She really wishes Zorii’d take off the gloves. Perhaps back on the _Falcon_ …

“Ahch-To.”

“What?” They start moving again, though it’s a little harder holding hands.

“Let’s go to Ahch-To after this. You, me, Finn, Jannah. Jannah’s teaching me how to swim.” Can Zorii swim? She realised she’s never asked that before, though it’s not really a subject that’s come up a lot. No large bodies of water in space. She’s sure Kijimi didn’t have an ocean. “Can you swim?”

Zorii shakes her head.

“Great,” says Rey, “she’ll teach you too. It’s a better place to learn swimming than on Kef Bir. And while we’re there, she and Finn can work on their meditation.”

“And what will I do while you’re all swanning off to do Jedi stuff? Hang out with those disturbing birds you keep telling me about?” Zorii sounds more amused than angry, and Rey lets some of her relief and joy reflect off her through their bond. Zorii won’t sense it the way a Force-user does, but she’ll feel its effects a little.

“The Porgs are cute,” Rey insists. “And Poe—”

“Nooo, not Poe! Ko Connix, Tico, Wexley, anyone, just not him.”

“The Porgs and you it is then,” teases Rey as they emerge out into a main hallway, bustling with vendors. “Come, I’m hungry. And we should also get something for Finn and Jannah.”

“Terrible souvenirs,” Zorii agrees. Her voice is steady once again, but Rey is glad she's not reaching for the helmet. “That's definitely something they need to experience.” She heads for a stand selling hats. Hopefully this means Rey will find out why one would need a garishly coloured hat on a space station. She glances back at the maintenance corridor. The threads of the Force, just minutes ago tightly enmeshed in that room, are beginning to unwind and fade.


	5. Chapter 5

“Why do you keep feeding them?” Phasma stomps into the hangar, scattering the...well Hux, isn’t exactly sure what they are. Something like the nightmarish result of genetic experimentations between a mynock and tooka. But they make purring sounds when scratched under their hairless wrinkled dewlaps and chase after the scraps of his sandwich eagerly enough.

“They’re vermin,” she continues, yelping when one of them whisks between her feet and runs off. “If they bite you and give you some kind of disease, I’m leaving you here to die.”

Hux ignores her. She’d been like that about Millicent too, never letting her come to close, grumbling about the waste of space, the fur, the danger of wild animals. Never mind that Millie had been perfectly well behaved and locked up in his quarters all the time. He suspects Phasma’s actually just scared of small animals, or any kind of animal where the danger is far less clear and it cannot be fought directly.

“So what have you found?” she asks, heading up the ramp. Hux rises from his shipping crate, bad knee cracking disconcertingly as he straightens. “Or have you just been encouraging the local strays?”

“They could solve our mynock problem.”

“Sure,” she scoffs. “Once they’re capable of breathing vacuum.” She wags a finger at him. “I swear, if you bring one aboard...this is _my_ ship.”

“As you so love to remind me,” Hux mutters under his breath, following her up into the belly of the _Nexu_. “You do realize your ship is named after a feline.”

“I didn’t choose the name. But thanks for reminding me, I’ll need to have that changed.”

Since their run in with Carmine—Cardinal—Phasma’s been abrasive and curt in a manner that’s unusual even for her, culminating with her locking him out of the _Nexu_ before stalking off. At least he’d had his datapad with him, all his slicing tools, and the sandwich from a food stall, so he’d settled down and started doing a second run through the logs they’d stolen, comparing it against the new information from Cardinal.

It’s ridiculous that he’s forced to do this; lurk out in an open hangar with only strays for company, jacking power from a sliced conduit. Every small humiliation like this reminds him how far he’s fallen, though the descent had started long before, since Starkiller. But leaving Phasma and making his own way across the galaxy isn’t an option for him yet. She has skills and resources he has yet to establish, and it helps that she’s far less recognisable than he is. Besides, until his debt to her is cleared, he is loath to have her where he can’t keep an eye on her, unsure if she’ll use her knowledge of his survival against him.

That doesn’t mean their reversal of roles doesn’t sting. Especially when he needs to make a request like the one he’s about to make.

“We need to make a run past Batuu.”

“Why?” She doesn’t even turn to look at him. When she’d once hung on every order. “Didn’t Cardinal confirm they’d no longer have anyone there?”

She’s really not going to like this.

“They have my cat.”

“Oh my—” Phasma’s hands rise to her head, like she wants to pull out her braid in frustration. “Your pfassking _cat_? Have you lost your damn mind?”

“There are records of a _Felis catus_ being auctioned off on Batuu.” He pulls up a holo of the feline in question. She’s a little bedraggled, collarless, and the fur on her tail looks singed, but the record names her to be healthy and in good condition. And it’s Millie, he knows it. In a sea of ill tempered, long-haired felines, he’d recognise her anywhere. And she’d been sold for fifty thousand credits to some filthy collector of exotic animals.

“You don’t even know if that’s her!”

“A _Felis catus_ doesn’t just randomly pop up on the black market,” he explains impatiently. “They don’t exist in the wild, and the best breeders are all in the Core, I had to pay a fortune for her. This is my cat, Phasma, and I’m getting her back.”

“And what about the men?” she asks. “The troopers you were so eager to rescue just hours ago.” That’s rich coming from her. At least one percent of the annual trooper deaths on the _Finalizer_ had been due to Phasma. A body count still lower than Kylo-pfassking-Ren’s, but a completely wasteful body count nonetheless.

“We’ll still go after them. This is just a detour.”

“A _ten_ parsec detour, Hux, you know that.”

“Dammit Phasma, just let me have this!” Hux yells, voice rising to a pitch despite his best efforts to refrain himself from losing it. It feels like something is trying to claw its way out from inside his chest, and it doesn’t care if it’s going to tear up his throat on the way out. “This one damn thing! We have nothing left, _nothing_ , everything I have built, everything that I have almost pfassking died for is _gone_! I will get my cat back, and then I will get my people back, and if you take issue with that, then you can leave!”

Phasma's face is as expressionless as the helmet she’d once worn. Hux might just be able to see his own reflection in her cold, unblinking eyes, the way he’d once seen it reflected in the chrome. “This is _my_ ship,” she says. “Go. Now.”

*

The bar is called _The Kowakian_. Just _The Kowakian_ , no further designation of creature or species, though Hux must admit his knowledge of the planet is limited. He’s there because the first time they’d passed it, Phasma had said, “Guess his monkey-lizard ran off,” and though the joke had been terrible, he remembers it, because Phasma doesn’t make jokes.

It’s also the first place that’d come to mind. Returning to where Cardinal has holed himself up is out of the question, and _The Kowakian_ is right near the entrance of Hanger 4-Besh. When Phasma comes looking for him, this is the first place she’ll go to.

Hopefully. Hux must admit to himself that actions he’s considered predictable once don’t seem to be many people’s first choice when it comes to deciding a course of action. Phasma has surprised him, over and over, and he should’ve figured that out months ago when he’d awoken to find her hauling his body out of a wrecked escape pod over Exegol.

A conscience, Cardinal had called it. A pfassking conscience! Hux’ll eat his hat at the thought of Phasma with a conscience, if he still had a hat to eat. A conscience isn’t something he’s ever sought to possess either. It gets you killed. He’s not trying to retrieve Opan because he’s feeling bad for the man, or sorry, or in any way regrets his past interactions with him. And he feels no fondness for him, no soft emotions save for mild respect. The man had been good at his job. An asset. And Hux wants his asset back. And then that asset can go do whatever the hell it wants, because Hux doesn’t have the resources to persuade him to stay.

And Millicent still comes first, no matter what.

He’ll figure out the logistics of keeping her in his tiny closet of a cabin and out from under Phasma’s feet later. _If_ Phasma comes. He might be misreading this too. There’s a high chance she’s already gone.

He sighs, tracing his finger over the rim of his empty glass, trying to recall the ships he’d seen docked in the hanger, so he can decide which will be easiest to slice into. Sometimes it’s best to do the damn thing himself; it’s only way it’ll get done.

“Y’know, I hate that I just need to take one look at your scowl and I can tell you’re being angry about having to do everything yourself.”

“Hello, Phasma.”

“This is why everyone hates you.”

Hux would honestly be disappointed if people hated him just for that, considering all the things he’s done. If she’s speaking just for herself, surely Phasma can dredge up a better reason.

“What are you doing here?” he asks, nonchalantly raising his glass to his lips before he remembers it’s already empty.

Phasma sighs, sagging against the bar. “We’ll go get your damn cat.” Hux keeps the glass at his lips to hide his smile. Clearly Phasma has also been drinking; she reeks, the sharp scent of alcohol wafting around her like a personal climate system. Cheap, terrible alcohol too. Hux wrinkles his nose. “Did you drink an entire bar?”

She sits down heavily. The bar stool creaks under her. “Don’t you fucking judge me, you miserable bastard,” she snarls. “You’re not the only one who lost everything.”

Hux scoffs. Knowing Phasma, the thought of her being cut up about the destruction of the Order seems absurd. “What did you even have there? Clearly nothing of worth since you threw it away at the closest opportunity.”

“Fuck you, _Mills Cent_.” She jabs him painfully in the chest to punctuate the name, almost unseating him, but not hard enough to wind him. “You care more about your cat than about your people!”

“At least I care about something!” he hisses in undertone, hoping she’ll follow suit. He hasn’t drunk enough to let down his guard—in a place like this, anyone could be listening. Someone’s always listening. “Yet you, everything just slides off you, doesn't it? You're as dense and chrome on the inside as you used to be on the outside.”

Her punch snaps his head back, unbalancing him enough that he topples over along with his barstool. Ears ringing, Hux rolls to his feet, grabbing onto the bar for support. At least, when he glances around, slightly dazed, everyone seems to be determinedly ignoring them. For now They need to leave before they attract any further attention.

“You know,” says Phasma. “I’ve wanted to do that for a long time. A very long time.” Even through the cloud of alcohol there’s a vicious gleam in her eyes. Of course the day he gets to see it unhidden by her helmet is the day it’s directed at him.

“Great. Happy to help. Feel better?”

“No, I think I’ll need another.” He manages to turn aside the next blow so that it glances off his temple, ducking under her outstretched arm to jab her as hard as he can in the soft tissue between her ribs and hip. Anyone else and he’d be driving his knife between their ribs, not the stiff blade of his hand. Though he misjudges how fast she recovers, even with all the drink, and fails to twist away before she can grab him by the collar of his coat.

Hux quickly wriggles out of that, leaving her with just the coat. The coat with his datapad in it. His slicing tools. The last of his credits. _Kriffing_ —

Phasma grins at him. “Let’s go back.”

Hux decides it'll be pointless to argue that she’s the one who threw him out in the first place. She hands him his coat back as they exit the bar, thumping him heavily on the shoulder as he pulls it back on. “You’re a cunt,” she says, “a spineless, snivelling cunt, and one day I will lose my patience with you and I will space you and watch you die, and I will laugh.”

Hux sniffs. “The feeling’s mutual.” He probes carefully at the skin under his eye, already feeling the swelling rise. It’s been a while since he’s received a black eye. He hopes Phasma's side feels equally bruised.

“Pfassking Cardinal,” he hears her mutter as she shoves her way past a Weequay in a bright red jumpsuit. Cardinal, really? Is this what this is all about?

“You don’t trust his information?” he asks. They should’ve shot him. Now he’s a security risk loose in the galaxy, and Hux is sure they won’t run into him this easily again. Especially now that he knows they’re out here. He’s not sure what stayed Phasma's hand or his own.

“No, I do,” Phasma growls. “And that’s the problem. A jumped up, idealistic fool like that. The bastard never had an ounce of ambition. I don’t understand it.”

Hux doesn’t understand either. Though it’s just like traitorous rebel scum, to keep escaping justice, defying death at every turn. “Yes,” Hux agrees. “I don’t know what potential my father saw in him, Cardinal was always weak and soft.”

“Still survived though.”

He grunts. “Apparently some people keep living, no matter how soft they are. Maybe things just—” he makes an explosive gesture with his hands, spreading his fingers wide “—bounce off.”

“I don’t like your damn cat,” she continues. “Sheds everywhere. Everytime I see her I’m reminded what a narcissistic asshole you are.” Hux rolls his eyes. He’s heard all this before. And Millicent being ginger is a complete coincidence. He’d requested a black cat. Their fur doesn’t show against his uniform. “And Opan! I’m only saving him so I can wring his neck. Anything else is...extra.”

“You don’t have to convince me of anything. Just take us to Batuu, and then Nar Shaddaa.”

“You don’t give me orders anymore.”

“Then consider it a request,” Hux sneers. “You’ll do it anyway.”

He expects another threat; that their cooperation is conditional, that the ship is _hers_ , some fantasy about how she’d rather space him and eat him for breakfast, but Phasma simply grunts. On the ship she heads straight to her cabin, and he hears her fall heavily into her bunk. Hux doesn’t return to his. This drunk, she’ll snore loud enough to wake the dead, and he’ll sleep better out here.

*

In the morning, Hux applies some of Phasma’s meager supply of bacta to his eye. The filter has worked its wonders on their water supply, and Hux finds that even his one minute shower puts him in a better mood, despite the fact that he can only half see out of one eye. He potters around the ship, looking for things to fix, and at some point he crashes again on the bunk in the common room, waking only when Phasma barges through to use the ‘fresher.

She emerges an hour later with her hair washed and curled at the nape of her neck. He likes it better like this; the braid strikes him as a liabilty, an easy handhold to grab in a fight. Phasma tosses a ration bar at him, jerking her head at the cockpit. Hux snatches it out of the air and follows, taking it for the truce that it is. Right now they need each other’s skills and experience, especially if they’re going through with this plan to retrieve both his cat and his assassin.

“So what’s the plan?” he asks, settling back in the creaky copilot’s chair. He chews carefully through the cakey bar to avoid any crumbs. “Millie will be a quick snatch and grab, but it won’t be easy to retrieve Opan. And any others.” If there are any others left.

“You told me someone paid fifty thousand for a stinking cat; you can't just swoop in, grab her and fly right back out. We need to have a proper plan for that. As for Opan and the rest, we’re not keeping them,” Phasma warns. Under her hands, the _Nexu_ comes to life with an uncomfortable lurch. Hux shifts in his seat. “Rescue and release. They can get their own ship and kark off.”

“Yes, of course,” Hux replies testily. It’s bad enough living with Phasma, he can’t imagine squeezing more former subordinates into this living situation.

“I’m not doing this for you.”

“Yes, I know that,” he snaps, “you’ve made that abundantly clear.”

“After this I’ll get to decide our plan of action.”

“We can go sightseeing over pfassking Coruscant if you want.”

“Stars, Hux, you’re so easy to rile up.” The corner of her mouth twitches. “That cat of yours had better help you calm down, or I’ll be spacing the both of you.”

“Stop making threats if you’re not going to follow through,” Hux says, settling down now that he realises she’s just ribbing him. He pulls up star maps of the Batuu System and of Hutt Space. Phasma pushes the throttle into hyperspace. The stars turn into smears of light beyond the viewport, then they’re gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Millie’s a normal cat. I ~~headcanon~~ headfanon that these are extinct in the GFFA, and are only bred by speciality breeders in the Core. Hux had to bribe a lot of people to get her, but he’s super extra, and he likes the idea of essentially owning the equivalent of a dinosaur as a pet.


End file.
